The Serpent of Eden
by Born-Of-Elven-Blood
Summary: Jane has been invited to study at the Asgardian Archive. The greatest repository of knowledge in the universe seems like a dream come true, but she will soon learn that nothing in life is free. Caught in a power struggle between gods, no paradise is without forbidden fruit, and every Eden has its serpent. [Loki/Jane] Sequel to Mark of the Beast; part III in the series.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **The characters and story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me, alas; this story is not for sale or profit.

**A/N: **Welcome back for Part III! If you are finding me for the first time, this story is a sequel, the third part in a series; I would recommend reading the preceding stories first.

Reading order: _Feed the Rain - __ Mark of the Beast - The __ Serpent of Eden_

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_**The Serpent of Eden**_

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**Prologue**

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"_And the Lord God said unto the serpent: Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed before every other creature... and I will put enmity between thee and the woman… _

_[But] the serpent was more cunning than any other creature that the Lord God hath made…"_

**- **Genesis, chapter 3

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The sun was just rising over the Nethermount, refracting dazzlingly through the mists over the Fields of Eternity and lancing in bright arcs along the crystalline spires soaring high over the mountaintop. They scattered rainbows amongst the fragrant shadows under the trees of Idunn's Garden, and lit the golden apples hanging ripe and heavy from the boughs with a glittering silvery gleam. At the heart of the garden, ensconced within a wall of dusky rose quartz, a lone figure crouched amongst its roots of the tallest, darkest, heartiest tree of all. The deep green of his clothing and the dark fall of his hair blended almost seamlessly with the shadows under the leaves, as though he were fading into the fabric of the garden itself.

Loki could admit there were days he almost wished he were. He might have been, once, when the blue spider had whispered at the edge of his mind, needling him towards the edge of sanity. Now, though... now he was quiet inside. The cool, sweet quiet of the garden was broken only by the distant murmur of water tumbling over rocks and the wind singing hauntingly through the crystals. The only interruption in the solitude here was the yearly harvest, when the younglings came to choose their golden apples; otherwise, though in no way forbidden, the garden remained empty as a tomb. It even had its share of ghosts, and despite its ethereal beauty, the Asgardians found the place deeply disturbing in a way Loki never had. When he let himself, he very nearly basked in the place and its elusive peace. It was idyllic, restful, safe from judges, false friends and accusing eyes, and just next door to the greatest library in all the worlds.

He could, perhaps, be content here.

But there was still something missing. Something vital. And without it he could never be satisfied, here or anywhere.

His hands traced ancient patterns over the gnarled roots and broken paving stones of the surrounding walk. Wherever he touched, the moss and stone blackened as though burned by a searing fire. Delicate black lines flowed from his fingertips until, with a flourish, Loki completed the line of scrollwork and raised his head, his hair falling away from the angular planes of his face as his eyes trailed up the rough, knotted lines of the trunk. Pressing his lips together thoughtfully, he looked back down, considering the vellum scroll spread on the ground beside him.

The Guardian had told him true; the spell matrix laid out on the scroll was detailed, yet obviously incomplete. Heimdall had little talent for spellcraft, and other no blueprint for this working existed. It had never been recorded in ink before its inception, and the spell had claimed the lives of nine of the ten magic masters that had cast it. The surviving master had fallen on Jotunheim during the Ice War, so that all that was left of their great working was the stalwart Guardian they had sacrificed themselves to create. He'd meant it, when he said it was a pity that there would never be another like Heimdall; obnoxiously upright as he could be, he truly was a wonder.

It mattered little now, though. The framework Heimdall had remembered and recorded was sufficient for a master of Loki's degree to build upon. And besides, he had no intention of reconstructing the spell matrix that had made the Guardian. What he had in mind was something new, similar in nature, but fundamentally distinct.

His eyes traveled over the archaic shapes, lighting on one line in particular that was repeated again and again. He shook his head.

"Not far-sight…" he muttered, his eyes unfocused and distant as his mind danced with magical matrices and scrollwork. "…near-sight? Close sight? No… no, _insight_. That's it…!"

Touching his fingers to the tree roots once more, he added new curves and angles to the pattern – only slightly different than the figures on the vellum, but enough to alter the spell fundamentally. Rising, he moved slowly around the tree, adding the same detail to each line of the spell.

When the last tracing had been struck, Loki stood back and surveyed his work with a critical eye. Long flowing ribbons of scrollwork radiated out from the tree in a wagon wheel, each spoke reaching almost to the border of the inner garden, branded meticulously into the ground. The corner of his lip quirked up in satisfaction and he bent to gather up Heimdall's scroll. He smoothed his fingers over the rich material, tracing the characters thoughtfully with his fingertips…

He paused, staring down at his hand.

It always hit him at the strangest times. And always as heavily as the first time. Sometimes if he kept busy he could almost forget. But it always came back to the truth.

_Not my hand. Not really…_

His fingers curled slowly into a fist.

The Tesseract's magic was gone from inside him. But the crack in his heart that had let it in was still there, a quiet chasm left ringingly empty, begging dangerously to be filled. It was a weakness; it needed to be patched.

Yet now he must not flinch from it. Rather than a stumbling block, the terrible truth would, for once, serve him.

With a gesture and a thought, he stowed Heimdall's scroll in his anti-space for safe keeping. His eyes fell closed and his senses turned inward, tracing his magic deep into the seat of his being. There he found it, where it had lay hidden all his life: a knot of magic, pulled tight by pure instinct, tense and unyielding as his clenched fist.

_This is necessary, _he reminded himself staunchly. _I cannot run from it, and I cannot fight it. I must face it. _

_I must face myself._

Else how could he ever expect Jane to?

Daydreams of her smile, her laugh, her bright eyes and her brighter spirit danced with sweet wicked fantasies of her soft lips and softer curves. Memory and imagination swayed and flickered together like shadows in the flames rising in his mind, only to be swallowed up, insubstantial as echoes, into that emptiness where his heart should be. They would never have form or life unless he could overcome this squeamishness that plagued him.

With slow, deliberate concentration, Loki relaxed that tight fist inside, uncurling each magical digit with methodical purpose, until his mental fingers fanned wide. A tension he'd never known was there flowed out of him, leaving him feeling curiously buoyant for an instant. But a bone-deep foreboding seized him and kept him earthbound as he felt the unknotting of the magic begin to take effect. He battled his fear into submission, refusing to bow to cowardice. With a trepidation that bordered on terror, he made himself open his eyes.

The fingers of his hand had unfurled with the fingers inside his mind. He watched, breathless, as the pale skin darkened, seeming to bruise, the veins beneath its surface blackening as though with rot, before the stretch of flesh flushed a bright, icy blue. Heavy, raised ridges puckered into existence, patterning the alien hide his skin had become as his fingernails darkened, thickened and lengthened into claws. His eyes seemed frozen wide open, staring, unable to look away. They stung as much with the dryness of the air as with the sudden, shameful temptation of tears, but moments later they stopped straining to water with want of blinking, and he knew they were no longer green. He clenched his teeth against revulsion, only to realize they had shifted and sharpened inside his mouth.

_Shapeshifter… _his mind hissed accusingly. _Face yourself._

It wasn't part of the spell. Not really. But it was necessary all the same. He had to look. He had to see.

He raised his head and drew his clawed hand through the air in a circle. The air shimmered and swirled with silver, and solidified into a mirror. He tried not to notice the crackling rim of ice or the sheen of frost that accompanied the formation of the reflective surface. It manifested without conscious effort when he was in this form. A natural defense mechanism, he knew, for when a Jotun saw something frightening. Or something it wanted to kill.

He stared at the reflection before him.

Red eyes like two pools of fresh blood stared back at him, hard and fixed with grim determination. More thick blue hide. More sharp, disfiguring ridges. An alien monster. But… the hair was unchanged, and the bone structure of the face was familiar. The lips, the nose, the shape of the eyes, all remained more or less untouched. The way those hideous crimson orbs narrowed with recognition, the way the thick brow drew together, troubled, a hundred little shifts in expression and mannerism…

He saw himself inside the monster.

"_What makes us who we are is our choices."_

"Oh, Jane…" he murmured, his voice bitter, irrationally irritated to watch the monster in the mirror speak her name. "What choice do I have in this...?"

He stared the monster down for another heartbeat, disgust and simmering rage a poor veil for the hopeless despair that threatened his composure from underneath. Half a dozen times already he'd tried to acknowledge his true face. He was no closer to accepting it. Even so, the truth was inescapable.

_I'm a monster. Cursed by birth. It makes no matter how well I choose. No choice I make can change that. _The truth of it reverberated through the chasm inside, until his eyes fell closed against the hollow ache. _Could she learn to love a monster? _

His resolve broke and he spun away from the terrible truth the mirror told, banishing it with a sharp wave of his arm. The crackling and tinkling of fracturing ice crystals was like salt in an open wound. His fists clenched again, his clawed nails biting into the flesh of his palms. The sharp sting was bracing, clearing the mire from his mind, helping him focus.

"Enough," he proclaimed to the empty air. He could torment himself later. Time was short and he would not get a second chance at this. Not to mention, he had little desire to remain in this form any longer than necessary.

He stepped down from the tree's overgrown roots, his boots crunching in the melting ice shards, and followed the burned ribbon of scrollwork to its end near the perimeter of the inner garden. There he rounded on the tree and planted his feet, bracing himself, and closed his eyes once more.

Again he sent himself inward, shoving aside all his disquiet and disgust and longing and pain, like sweeping back obscuring curtains, opening wide, empty swaths of space within his mind. A vacuum waiting to be filled.

From deep inside, he felt its approach: magic rising.

He coaxed it on, feeling it swell and expand inside him. On a typical day, he would seize it, shape it and send it forth with a thought or gesture. His mind flexed instinctively to do so, but he made himself relax as the tide rose within him. There was a quiet creaking and crackling, and try as he might, Loki could not avoid noticing the spreading carpet of frost radiating along the ground in a delicate latticework from where he stood. He spared a moment's worry for the trees – to his knowledge, the weather in the garden had never been anything but temperate – but the magic suffused his bones and burned in his blood, and he had no concentration to spare on idle thought.

When the magic ceased to well up on its own he reached deeper inside and drew more up by force, slowly, inexorably filling himself to bursting with magic, like reaching down into the heart of the Wyvern's Maw on Muspelheim, until it blasted him with a volcanic heat beyond description. It was enough to burn a normal magic master from the inside out…

But Loki was no ordinary magic master. Loki was one of the best.

And Loki was also a Frost Giant.

The crackling latticework of ice now formed a halo around him, as the hoarfrost nearest him began to melt before the roaring fire inside; but though Loki felt the heat, the instinct of his physical nature took over, countering the flame with the essence of ice. Ice crystals formed on his skin, only to melt into gleaming beads, refreezing and melting again and again. Time lost meaning, and he stood, silent, still and patient as a seed in the earth, drinking the power and waiting.

Until at length, the seed cracked to spill forth a rush of green.

His eyes snapped open, the green glowing in their red depths for a long, tense instant, before they overflowed with inner light seeking to escape. Energy shimmered from his skin and hair, his ugly ridges luminescent as a green lava flow under a network of fault lines. Light pooled in his palms, spilling from his limbs into the air in a nimbus of green sparks. The sheer volume of verdant energy roaring through him begged undeniably for release.

Reaching deep, he pulled one final swell of power into his flesh. He gasped. Too much… _too much! _Green fire broke over his form, catching, engulfing him. But not consuming him. It shone through his blue flesh like sunlight shining through deep waters, lighting the shadows of the inner garden with shifting shafts of emerald and turquoise.

The burst shook him, driving him to one knee. He knelt there, tense as a bowstring, endeavoring to breathe around the enormity of the energy he was holding. Hesitating. A disturbing thought rose through the rampant green fire in his mind.

The power boiling through his blood was vast, unwieldy… overwhelming. It had killed nine of the ten Asgardians that had ever touched it, and the only reason he was not yet a pile of smoldering ash on the ground was because he was a being made to kill heat.

Jane was a mortal, finite and fragile as spun glass.

_Can she survive this?_

The magic surged inside him with a nearly devastating momentum, demanding release. He groaned, bowing his head as a sharp, fiery agony tore at him despite the frost.

_She can… she must… she will… _

She would _have_ to. It was too late to turn back now.

"Nothing is born without pain," he breathed breathlessly.

The trees made no answer, but he imagined that, for just an instant, he could feel them watching as he created something that had not existed in the Garden since before the time of the Great Beginning.

Change.

Swiftly, before he could lose his grip on the magic - or change his mind - he stretched his burning hand out to the ground. His fingertips brushed the scorch mark of the spell, lighting them with green fire.

"Nngh… aah! AAARGH!"

It burst from him in a torrent of scouring pain and liquid light, flowing into the scrollwork, leaving him to collapse onto hands and knees, claws digging into the brittle veneer of ice, fighting to pull enough air into his burning lungs. He raised his head just enough to watch it erupt away in a violent pulse, and in spite of the quandaries on his mind and the burning in his body, a ghost of a smile found his face.

"After the rain…" he murmured, panting, "comes the sun."

The magic caught like wildfire, energy racing along the charred black pattern of the spell like sparks along a fuse. The ribbon began to undulate, writhing with a living vitality. But the fire did not stop when it reached the end of the ribbon at the base of the tree. It flowed onward, up the trunk. And carried the pattern with it.

The black scrollwork strained against inertia for an instant, then burst forth like a striking snake. And like a snake, the symbols left the ground and slithered up the trunk of the tree, coiling around it in a livid spiral of living light, constricting and swirling up the branches until it kissed each gleaming apples with a warm golden glow.

The spell was not finished. As the first ribbon found its place on the tree, the second ribbon to the east spontaneously caught fire, welling with green flame to follow the first. Then came the next, then the next, each ribbon winding in time around the great apple tree, patterns twining together into an ever more complex weave. On and on it went until, with the last strand of the spell, the tree was no longer a tree, but a great green and gold jewel awash in glittering fire, refracting through the intricate facets of the spellwork to birth a power far greater than the sum of its elements. It was no longer merely shapes and energy. It was now a kiln of creation.

Loki sat back on his heels and watched, rapt, as the final ribbon fastened itself in place, reveling for a long, heady instant in the power and wonder of the magic he'd wrought. The light hung suspended in gossamer curtains around the tree, thrumming, ready. The magic pulsed brighter, and brighter still, and began to hum, buzzing almost musically, like a kicked goldfly hive. The power pulled at his every sense.

Carefully, uncertain of his strength after wielding such a wealth of magic, he levered himself to his feet. The instant the fire was fully gone from his flesh, his mental fingers slammed closed, and between one heartbeat and the next, the Frost Giant was gone, and the Aesir Prince had returned. Slowly he approached the blinding tree. Reaching into his traveler's cloak, he withdrew his little vial of stolen blood. He considered the tree as his footsteps stilled between two of its shining roots, picking out the weave beyond the glare of the magic, reading the patterns in the scrollwork one last time. Doubt still gnawed at the edges of his thoughts. He glanced down at the vial.

_She _will_ survive this. I will see to it. On my life, no matter what it takes, she will not burn...  
_

He uncapped the vial and upended it against the trunk. The last few beads of blood flowed out like crimson tears to splash against the glowing wood.

The tree pulsed hard enough to make the mountain shiver, quivering and drinking the blood through its very bark.

"_Ye shall not surely die_…" he quoted the old Midgardian myth, smirking with dark amusement as the whole world turned white with light, the hum climbing, its harmonics condensing to a single crystalline note, "…_in the day ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods…_"

Blinding light exploded in a kinetic wave through a sudden cacophonous roar. The sound rolled out, a nearly physical thing, then rebounded, drawing in to the tree with sonic force as the magic found its purpose. A jarring pop was followed by a deafening silence, and then all the light went out of the world.

Loki was blinking owlishly for a full half minute before his vision began to return. The furiously blazing light was gone, but the full darkness under the trees of the inner garden had not returned. Now, each golden apple of the great tree gave off a warm, gentle luminescence, hanging like glimmering lanterns from the labyrinthine weave of the branches, enriching the fragrant air of the arboreal hall with a golden glow.

Loki didn't fight the soft smile that rose to his lips as he pulled a low hanging branch down so that he could examine his creation, admiring the way the golden patterns of the spell caught the ambient light, sealed into the very flesh of the fruit. His eyes strayed inexorably to the hand that held the apple. His hand was pale and familiar again, but he was beyond pretending, and a pang of longing sparked in his chest at the tableau: the dichotomy of life and death wrapped in secrets and cradled in devastating knowledge.

His smile turned wicked with renewed anticipation that swept any lingering doubts aside.

"My gift to you, Jane," he declared quietly, releasing the branch to bounce back up into the lower canopy. He watched it sway there, so deceptively simple and sweet, aromatic and alluring, tempting the senses, begging to be bitten. Drawing deeply on the apple scented air, he curbed a capricious urge to laugh out loud with triumph and expectation.

He had crafted the ultimate forbidden fruit. Now all he had to do was convince Jane to take a bite.

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**TBC**

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**A/N: **So it begins again! Thanks to everyone who has stuck with the story so far, and thanks to everyone who reviewed my previous stories; look forward to hearing your thoughts on this one as well! Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome. Sorry this prologue is so short, next chapter will be longer!

PS - For those of you who were disappointed that we didn't get to see Loki take his bath (chapter 4 of _Mark of the Beast_), it might be that I let the muse talk me into writing that scene... which might have taken a slight turn for the naughty... which is why its not posted on this site, but on the AdultFanFiction archive. The link to that little oneshot, _Lies and Illusions, _can be found on my profile page if anyone is curious what Loki gets up to when he's alone in the bath... *hides under a rock*.

Thanks for reading, more to come soon!


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: **The characters and story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not belong to me, even though I used all three wishes trying to acquire it. So, alas, I'm down one magic lamp, and this story is still not for sale or profit.

**A/N: **Look! An update! *runs away while your back is turned*

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_"Do the difficult things while they are easy and the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  
-Lao Tzu_

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"Yes!" Jane exclaimed, crawling out from under the bed with her favorite tee shirt wadded up in her hand. "Found it!"

It must have fallen there last time Thor had peeled it off of her. Despite her little victory, her lips pressed into a tight line against a sharp twist of premature home sickness. She gave the shirt a sharp snap to rid it of dust, wishing she could flick her uncertainties away so easily.

"I still don't understand why this is necessary," Thor said from where he stood in the doorway, watching Jane try to find a spare inch in her already overflowing suitcase.

"I know they'll dress me up like a doll again once I get there, just like last time," she said, a forced lightness in her tone. "But I'd like to be comfortable once in a while. There's nothing like curling up in your favorite t-shirt after a long day…"

"You know that is not what I mean," Thor said chidingly. He sighed. "You've already had a very fine education, Jane. You are one of the most knowledgeable mortals in Midgard."

Jane avoided looking up at him as she searched the room for anything she might be forgetting. The only thing she could think of was the small, unopened scroll on her bedside table, and she wasn't likely to forget that, but she made another circuit of the room anyway, grasping at distraction.

Ever since Arild Olafson had dropped out of the sky last week, Thor had been making similar comments like clockwork, and she'd was having more and more trouble meeting his eyes. It wasn't his fault; it was her own hypocrisy that made it so difficult to face him, and that made her answers sound so feeble with each repetition. Despite the excitement that zinged through her every time she remembered - _I'm going to study on Asgard! _- it was demoralizing to think about how quickly she'd let the the tables turn.

Mere moments before the Bifrost had lit up the sky, she'd been in the midst of recovering from her ordeal with the Tesseract's mark, vowing to get on with her life here in London; trying not to think about Loki, the fugitive she'd let go out of guilt, gratitude and curiosity; and mired in disturbing thoughts of abandonment, wondering through ghosts of trust, and deeply anxious that Thor would disappear again and return home rather than be trapped here, with or without her.

Now, abruptly, the situation was reversed, and she was the one dropping everything to run off to Asgard. All this time she'd been tying herself in knots, questioning Thor's motives and loyalty, and it turned out she was the one whose convictions could not be trusted.

Even so, the answer remained the same. She might be ashamed of herself for going; but she knew she would hate herself someday if she didn't.

"'_Unimpeded access to the sum of all Asgardian knowledge'_, Thor. Those were the exact words in the letter," she replied emphatically, understanding his misgivings, but genuinely unable to comprehend why he couldn't grasp the significance of the statement. "It's the opportunity to take my research to a whole new level! To find answers to questions I've been asking all my life…" she explained for the tenth time. "I'm a scientist, a scholar a..." _A hunter... _she banished the memory with a shiver. "I just... I _can't _let this opportunity pass."

The words written on the vellum scroll that Olafson had placed in her hand flitted through her thoughts; she'd read them so many times that she had them memorized, and that particular phrase stood out like a diamond in a pile of coal.

_**Jane Foster, Science Master of Midgard - In honor of your bravery, and by virtue of your skill and intellect, you are to be honored hereby with induction into the Asgardian Order of the Archive, upon which you will receive instruction in the three principle disciplines, and be granted unimpeded access to the sum of all Asgardian knowledge. We bid you present yourself and this script in the Grand Terminal of the Hall of Scholars, therein to pass standard and be recognized. **_

Honors, all that ceremony and pomp and people congratulating each other on being remarkable, she would not have glanced twice at. But knowledge... that was a prize she could not resist.

The letter had been signed by Lorens Amundson, the Master of Masters – somebody important, judging by Master Olafson's air of gravitas. Or unlikely, judging by Thor's incredulous expression. The head of the Order and the de facto ruler of the Archive.

_The Archive._ From the letter Jane had surmised that it was something like a school, but once they were all back indoors - Olafson looking around her living room with a distinct air of distaste, like he was standing inside a mud hut instead of a flat - Thor had told her that it was far more than that.

"_It is the principle institution of learning on Asgard," Thor explained. His voice was tight, but there was a reluctant pride shining in his eyes and a soft smile on his lips as he reminisced. "But that's not what it's for. Not really. Its purpose is preservation. It is a library, a museum, a great warehouse of artifacts, a labyrinth. It is… well, an archive. An archive of the history and knowledge of Asgard, the Nine Realms, and places beyond..."_

He'd gone on to describe great stone halls filled with treasures and relics, powerful ancient weapons, astonishing works of art, ornate golden jewelry crusted in precious gems, magical artifacts made from solid shadow or living fire, beasts from extinct species trapped in suspended animation, scrolls and tomes filled with forgotten knowledge. Wonders of all the worlds out of the ancient past, all suspended in time fields, a collection accumulated over thousands and thousands of years.

"_No one knows how big it is," he told her in a hushed, emotive tone, as Jane listened, wide-eyed and rapt from the edge of her seat. "The halls were cataloged once, but over ages the magic used to preserve the relics seeped into the very stones and mortar and living rock, and it altered the flow of space and time within the Archive's halls; now they shift and change without warning. The doors and stairs don't always lead to the same place twice."_

Because of this, he'd claimed, a great deal of knowledge became inaccessible to ready access, and had essentially been lost; literally, more history of the universe had been forgotten by the Order of the Archive than any other repository of knowledge had ever acquired. But all of it remained hidden inside the great Nethermount, waiting to be rediscovered. He continued at length, ever the excellent story teller, until Jane had stars in her eyes.

But after she'd come out of her state of shock and awe, and begun talking excitedly about what it would be like to go, Thor's enthusiasm had quickly dried up.

"_It is a courtesy," _he had insisted immediately, shaking his head when she said that of course she was going._ "My father means this to smooth relations with you, I am certain. The Order could not accept you. You're Midgardian. It is unheard of." _

The hurt of those words was still with her as she crammed her headphones into the outer pocket of her bag. They shouldn't, she told herself. He didn't mean to imply she was inferior, he was just stating a fact about Asgardian tradition. But it had hurt anyway.

"_The appointment was made at the behest of the Allfather, that is so," _Olafson had interrupted to inform them.

"_There you have it," Thor nodded, smiling with satisfaction. At Jane's mulish glare, his face fell slightly. "Besides," he continued hastily in a disarming tone that only made Jane's hackles rise, "the Archive doesn't admit novices until they have reached the age of seventy. Even if it is a serious offer, you are far too young yet."_

Jane had pressed her mouth into a hard line against a pang of pain that complicated and deepened the previous hurt and stared at him, silent, for a long moment more, waiting for him to realize what he'd just said. Her stomach had twisted into a hard little knot when she saw he wouldn't.

"_Thor… I can't afford to wait until I'm seventy. I'll be an old woman by then."_

Jane thought he could not have looked more startled if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water in his face. He sucked in a breath, staring down at her for a long moment, his eyes unfathomable, as though memorizing her. As though she'd be dead in five minutes, in stead of fifty years or more. For him, it might as well be the same thing.

When he'd looked away, a tiny little sliver of her heart had frozen solid. It wasn't really wrong, the rest of her had reasoned, for him to avoid thinking of her impending demise, especially if there was nothing he could do about it. But that cold little fragment remained, and in the end she was glad of it. It bolstered her resolve.

"_E__ven so…" he persisted. "Jane, they cannot seriously…"_

"_The Allfather appeared to be quite serious," Olafson interjected helpfully; though his face was a mask of polite detachment, there was a gleam in his eyes that said he was enjoying their disagreement a little too much. "And the Master of Masters is sincere in his invitation. 'Let her come,' he said before I departed." A little smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he quoted his superior. _

_Jane gave him a suspicious look, hearing what he said and wondering what he wasn't saying. She almost asked what he meant, but she turned her glare on Thor instead._

"_If they don't want me, they can send me back," she said, crossing her arms stubbornly. "But I am going."_

That had shut Thor up for a good long while, and Jane had had the pleasure of wiping the smirk off of Olafson's face when she offered him her guest room.

"_I… had thought we would return now. My lady," Olafson tacked the address on as an after thought. His lips twisted sourly. "My orders are to bring you back when I return…"_

"_Well then you'll need someplace to sleep until I can get everything arranged." _

The Asgardian had looked like he would rather have chewed glass, but with his prince standing three feet away, watching him expectantly, he had had no choice but to bow to circumstance. The look he'd shot Jane over his shoulder when he thought he was unobserved had been positively venomous.

Matching word to action, Jane had not wasted a moment getting on with making plans. She had phoned Erik and Darcy immediately, and the very next day began making arrangements with her university contacts and funding organizations for an official sabbatical, called the bank to ensure her rent and monthly bills would get paid, and arranged with Mrs. Ketterling next door to water her plants while she was away. She even left her mother a message, letting her know that she was going on a trip to a "remote area" for research, and would be unavailable for a while – not actually a lie, though she doubted her mother would have any inkling of just how _remote _her destination would be_. _Master Olafson had dutifully and with a minimal display of resentment, taken up residence in her spare room; he spent most of his waking hours on the roof, doing inexplicable things with little balls of green light and staring sullenly up at the sky like a man marooned on a desert island staring out to sea, and his conversation became more pointedly polite and more smilingly biting with each passing day Jane forced him to remain.

As for Thor, though her immediate insistence had silenced his immediate objections, it hadn't changed his mind, and now, a week later, as she prepared to leave in the morning, he was still against it. And not just because he thought it was a bad joke or a 'courtesy'. There were plenty of other reasons this was an inconvenient moment, and a questionable idea.

The truth was, Jane _knew _she should probably wait a while before she disappeared off to Asgard for an extended stay. Stark Industries was still plotting that moronic endeavor, Project Fortress, with SHIELD and the UN. There was no guarantee they would see reason, and every chance that she could be effectively trapped on an alien world if their proposed energy field went up. It was vital that someone remain here to reason with them. And therein lay the only _real _disadvantage she could see to this golden opportunity.

Thor would not be coming with her.

"_I must stay here,"_ he had told her when she suggested that he would be happy to be able to go home. _ "Tony Stark still has need of my aid." _He'd smiled sadly at her, only a hint of disappointment in his eyes – but even so, it was there_. "After all, we've waited so long… what will we do if their magic wall traps you on Asgard, and me on Midgard?" _

It had given Jane serious pause. Though she knew logically that what he was saying was right, it hadn't truly occurred to her that he would have any other reason for staying on Earth…

_Thor divides his affections. _

Jane banished the insidious, Loki-esque voice to the back of her mind. That wasn't important right now. One of the reasons she loved Thor was that he put others before himself, even though he sometimes put others before her as well. And after all, she was the one dividing her affections now, putting her search for knowledge above her life with Thor; what right did she have to complain?

Jane's hands stilled in the midst of stuffing an extra pair of socks into the front zipper pocket of her suitcase as a flurry of doubts assailed her. What was she doing? She had waited so long for Thor. Now he was finally here, the Tesseract and the mark were gone, and they were together. It was what she'd been longing for all this time. How could she walk away when everything was finally coming together?

The thought, now, as then, arrested her for only a moment. Then she shook herself and scowled. Because it always came back to the same truth: how could she not?

_ "I waited two years for you," _she had reminded him matter-of-factly_. "I need to do this, just like you had things you needed to do. I understood. Now it's your turn."_

That, again, had shut him up quickly, though he hadn't looked happy about it.

_Why should _he _worry? _she thought uncharitably, _he has all the time in the world. I'm the one with the time limit. _

It was beginning to bother her that she kept manipulating him to get her way. It also bothered her just how easy it was. A healthy relationship was about trust. Their relationship seemed punctuated at every turn by injury and retribution. And seeded with secrets - Loki's piercing eyes flashed through her thoughts.

Jane paused to rub a hand over her eyes, trying to send the sight away by proxy. Yet another stumbling block, but of a very different nature; it was getting inexplicably harder to banish the memory of Loki, the longer he was gone from her life, and his voice was always there in the back of her mind – not like the whispers of the Tesseract, but like her own guilty conscience, driving her to question what she knew and trust nothing. It fed into her troubling thoughts about her relationship; Jane thought she loved Thor, and she wanted to trust him. But did she?

Again she heard it – Loki whispering at her from her memory: _Thor divides his affection. _

Jane sighed. It wasn't magic or psychic invasion, it was just simple, garden variety insecurity. But it decided her all over again. A change of scenery might be exactly what she needed; it seemed counter-intuitive, considering how long they'd been apart already, but perhaps some distance, now that she knew exactly where Thor was and what he was doing, and some time to sort out priorities and think over her situation objectively, would be just the thing to help her understand her own misgivings and work through them. Where better than Asgard?

Twisting to lean hard on top of her suitcase, she scattered the stormy jumble of doubts and memories that were clouding her head, and cocked a mischievous eyebrow at Thor while trying to coax the zipper around the bulging flap.

"You're just jealous that I got asked and you didn't," she insisted teasingly, favoring him with a cheeky grin, attempting to lighten the mood between them. She'd be leaving in the morning; she didn't want them to part on shaky ground.

"Oh?" Thor chuckled, smiling back at her grudgingly. "I think not. I wasted quite enough time studying in the Archive already."

"Really?" Jane exclaimed, newly intrigued. She supposed she should have guessed it, given how vivid his descriptions of the Archive had been, but the idea of him actually attending school had never occurred to her. It wasn't that he was in any way unintelligent, but... She tried to picture Thor studying, and failed utterly.

"Oh yes, though not exactly by choice," he confirmed. "As the sons of the king, both my brother and I were expected receive instruction there. Loki excelled, of course," he said wistfully, and Jane felt herself go very still at the sound of that name spoken aloud. "He remained for hundreds of years. I, on the other hand, hated it; all but the battle disciplines, that is. I attended from my seventieth birthday until I was eighty-four, and then never set foot in the place again. Do not mistake me, the Archive is a wonder beyond compare, and I value the battle mastery I earned there. But more often than not it was nothing but books and scrolls and lectures from the masters, discipline and rules, all work and no fun." He actually shuddered, as though the thought of academia were viscerally unpleasant. "I really can't imagine why anyone would continue it voluntarily."

Jane shrugged, trying to recover from the sound of Loki's name rolling off of Thor's tongue so casually – hearing it outside of her head for once had a far more devastating impact on her composure. _Hundreds of years studying at the Archive… he would understand why I have to go… like he understood… so much… _She cleared her throat a little too loudly.

"Well, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't," she said, putting a bit of dry bite into her tone, though it sounded forced to her ears. He made it sound like a prison rather than a privilege. Perhaps to him it had been, but even filtered through Thor's obvious disdain, to Jane it still sounded like an academic paradise. She made herself grin at him. "Listen, if you're just going to stand there, make yourself useful and go find out what our cuddly friend Arild wants on his pizza. I know how much he loves take out, wouldn't want to disappoint him."

In spite of himself, Thor's face split into a wide grin, and his shoulders shook with quiet laughter.

"He is going to truly despise you if you don't stop teasing him," he informed her, shaking his head, bemused.

_He already does, _Jane thought.

"I can't help it," she said aloud with a shrug and a grimace. "He's so pretentious, he's just asking for it."

"He's young yet," Thor said. "He will grow out of his arrogance."

"Older than me," Jane muttered under her breath as Thor disappeared around the corner, headed for the roof. Her face fell into a more sober shape as she turned back to her preparations. Thor might joke about Olafson's dislike of her, but the truth was that he really did seem to have something against her, and she didn't know why. His words were never anything but courteous, but the unrelenting antagonism in the set of his mouth and the ice behind his eyes whenever she was around were palpable.

With a final tug, the suitcase gave up the fight and zipped shut. Sighing, she flopped down onto the bed next to it, catching her breath. Her fingers stretched out to run over the blanket on Thor's side of the bed… the complicated twist of doubts and dark thoughts began creeping back in like some insidious fog of apprehension to cloud her mind again, coalescing this time into a far simpler bank of feelings. She grimaced again as that pesky pang of longing and home-sickness nagged at the center of her chest.

She had to do this. She _had _to. If she let this opportunity pass her by, she'd never be able to forgive herself. But Thor…

_...and Loki… _

Jane swallowed hard as a chill went through her. She had been avoiding spending time alone this past week, and not just because she would miss her friends. Though they could hardly be termed shallow worries, as long as she was distracted with present concerns, she could avoid deeper, far more troubling waters. When she was alone with her thoughts, they opened up and seemed to swallow her down.

It was _Thor _she was worried about, Thor she would miss, Thor that she was leaving, Thor that she would be waiting for, Thor she would look for to come to her... It _was_…

And yet...

How many times was she going to have to swear to herself that she would not think of Loki anymore, before she finally stopped doing it? How many times was she going to have to remind herself that she had already denied him, bested him and rejected him? He wasn't coming back. He was alive out there somewhere, but he was quiet now, he was gone, making his own path - _he better not be getting into trouble -_ seeking his own healing - _he doesn't even know what healing looks like - _and it had _nothing_ more to do with her.

And yet…

Jane closed her eyes momentarily as a rush of something she didn't want to acknowledge, much less identify, suffused her nervous system in a pulse, like a nudge from within to force her deeper into her own disquiet.

He was gone, and still he would not get out of her thoughts.

The rune pendant lay cool against her breast bone, and if she flexed her leg, she could feel the familiar press of the golden disc of medicine against her hip from within her pocket. Physical evidence of her disregard for her own resolve; forgetting about him would probably be a hell of a lot easier if she didn't have these constant tangible reminders. Yet despite the dramatic finality of their parting, despite the likelihood that they would never meet again, she could not bring herself to put either item aside. She'd needed them in the past, and that could make a convenient and viable excuse, but it wasn't need that made her keep them. Much as she'd like to lie to herself, the truth was that it was sentiment that kept her from throwing them away. They had seen her through terrifying times, and something in her wouldn't let them go. Didn't that mean that something in her wouldn't let go of what they represented? Or...

She danced away from that mine field.

Part of her had assumed it had been the Tesseract's influence that had driven her to keep the talismans close, some trick of perception that gave them more importance to her than they should carry on their own. But the mark was gone now, and she still felt a deep-seated reluctance to go without them.

Frowning, she reached up to run a light finger across her smooth forehead, her thoughts turning in directions she preferred to avoid.

The rage and the rain had vanished like a bad dream at dawn, and the blue fire had been doused, true… but there was no way to drive the memory of those two bloody cuts on her forehead from her thoughts. _Uruz_, the mark of the beast, over one brow, _sowulo, _the mark of the healing sun over the other, deep gashes weeping crimson tears, not clean as though they'd been cut, but ragged, as though they'd been torn open from the inside…

_They're gone… but what have they left behind? _

Alexa Solberg's warning rang in her head alongside the runic symbols, the words she had divined but did not understand: _"When the King's Ward falls, stand strong and run for the edge of the world." _Something in them made Jane's gut clench with foreboding.

She shivered and shifted her train of thought back to its previous track; those thoughts were bad enough.

Because...

Her hand fell to brush the pendant now, tracing its frigid lines as the other smoothed over the bulge in her pocket. _Sowulo _was easy to find by touch, and another pang of longing, distinctly different from the others, assailed her defenses. Trepidation welled up in her chest, tightening her fingers around the pendant.

_Admit it. Face it. You're afraid its true._

The truth was, despite all reasonable evidence to the contrary, something in her wouldn't quite believe Loki was done with her. And something in her...

The ugly truth was that something in her didn't _want_ him to be.

He confused her and frightened her, he made her angry and above all, he made her curious. He proven to her that knew her, not the particulars of her life, but the essence of who she was, even though they hardly knew each other. He claimed it was because they were alike. Part of her wondered if she was more like Loki than Thor. That was terrifying. But it didn't quell her curiosity in the slightest. It was some sort of morbid fascination, like watching a train wreck or a horror movie. She couldn't look away.

What if he really wasn't finished with her? What if he came for her with something… important… meaningful… _interesting_… and she was gone? What if her absence caused him to do something... _unfortunate?_ Would he know she'd gone to Asgard? Would he be able to reach her there? Part of her felt a responsibility for him. Part of her still felt she owed him a debt. Part of her believed sincerely that if she just let him go and forgot, he'd never trouble her again. Part of her burned with curiosity about the man behind those striking green eyes. And part of her – a tiny, tiny part so faint that it was usually child's play to ignore it, and she usually did – quailed at that idea of never seeing him again.

"..._Y__ou are my rain… __I want you…_ everything depends on you… you are the key… _____I love you… __I'm counting on you…"_

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, tearing her hands away from the talismans as though they burned, and pressed the heels of her hands into the sockets, as though she could physically shut out the echoes of his voice by blotting out the sight of the world around her. Instead, she only succeeded in picturing him in the darkness behind her eyelids, the way he looked illuminated by green lightning as he loomed over her in the darkness of the hotel room, his insubstantial form emerging from the shadows within Alexa Solberg's apartment, the sight of his ethereal sending painted in black wind and blue fire, his eyes bright with longing, his voice begging her from out of the storm…

"_Jane…"_

Her eyes flew open as a chill moved through her, the memory of his voice so powerful that she could almost swear she'd heard him whispering her name in the silence of the bedroom she shared with Thor…

Everything was quiet. She was alone. She shook her head at her own pathetic inconsistency. These thoughts were insupportable. Impossible. Wrong.

A golden gleam caught in the corner of her eye, and she immediately latched onto it and gratefully let herself be distracted. She turned her head to focus on the slender scroll, laying innocuously on her nightstand, sealed with a golden ring. It had been concealed inside the first, which had opened readily enough. This one, however, remained sealed and impenetrable.

Thor had tried to open it the night Olafson arrived, but not even he could budge the ring.

_"This is my father's seal," _he had observed_. "But it is warded with magic… no strength alone will break it." _

Perplexed, Jane had turned to Olafson.

_"You're a magic master, right? Can't you un-magic it or something?"_

Olafson had narrowed his eyes at her, apparently affronted on top of his baseline aversion to her.

_"If my king has sealed the missive," _he informed her waspishly, "_it is hardly my place to unmake his spell." _

_ "Then how do I open it?"_

"_I imagine it will open when the Allfather intends it. Not before." _

And that had been the end of it. She and Thor had tried to open it several times since, but still the scroll remained firmly sealed.

Frowning, Jane reached over and picked it up now, absently twisting it so that the golden seal winked at her in the lamplight.

"What do you want with me, Odin?" she murmured, fingering the seal.

The tips of her fingers tingled. The seal snapped in two.

"What the…" She bolted upright, blinking rapidly, her lips parting in surprise as the vellum roll loosened in her fingers. _It will open when the Allfather intends it… _Why now?

Pressing her lips together with a sudden trepidation, she unrolled the scroll.

_**Jane Foster – These words are for your eyes alone. **_

"Oh..._ oh..."_ Thinking back, this was the first time she'd ever tried to open the scrolls when she was alone. Shaking her head, bemused, she read on.

_**Sinister whispers have reached the palace, and a threat may be mounting within the Archive. The throne has need of eyes and ears within the Nethermount. You have been chosen for this task.**_

_What? _

Jane re-read the opening line several times, and it made no more sense upon repetition than the first. Closing her mouth, which had fallen open in astonishment, she made herself keep reading.

_**An outsider and a mortal, you are ideal for the role. You will be seen as impartial by some, courted for your connection to Thor by others, and underestimated and marginalized by the rest. And once the novelty of your presence wears off, you will go largely unnoticed. When you are established within the order, that is when your use will begin. **_

_Use..._ Jane frowned at that. It made her sound like an appliance or a tool. But then, if she was understanding this correctly, that was exactly how Odin saw her...

_**I cannot force you to accept this responsibility, as you are a citizen of another realm. But I hold hope that you will comply willingly, as it is not without benefit to yourself. The Archive is Asgard's true wealth, and all within it is yours for the taking, if you prove wise enough to seize this opportunity. You are the first of your kind to be admitted into the Order. Despite the circumstances, I urge you to prove yourself worthy of the offer by being wise enough to take it. And doing whatever is necessary to keep it.**_

Which meant, of course, that if she chose not to comply, some pretense would be found to revoke her welcome, and she would be back on Earth, her adventure and its rewards over before she had time to spin around. Jane pressed her lips into a tight white line.

_****__**Your first mission will be to establish yourself within the Order, to blend in, to work and study as any novice would, to keep your eyes open, and to await further instruction. **_You will speak to **no one**_** of this. If you choose to serve, place this scroll into the hand of a magic master named Grete Dahl, and carry out your orders. I will send for you when the time is ripe.**_

_**I expect much from you. You must not disappoint me. It may be that the fate of worlds depends upon it. **_

_**Odin Allfather  
King of Asgard**_

Jane's could hardly believe what she was reading. Odin wanted her to _spy _for him? It was… outrageous. Ridiculous. Completely insane. And… well, kind of brilliant, actually. Odin had made no secret of his opinion of her last time they'd met. _It's t__he last thing anyone would ever suspect… _

It took a long few minutes of staring at the rich dark ink for the words to really sink in; her mind and heart both raced as she considered what he was asking. Then a slow, triumphant smile spread over her face. Thor's voice echoed in her head, telling her that it couldn't possibly be a serious offer… insinuating, despite his best intentions, that she was not, nor could she ever be, good enough for Asgard's academic circles... but now…

___T__he offer is _definitely _real. _At least she wouldn't turn up on the Archive's doorstep only to be laughed at and turned away, a fear she'd dismissed to the back of her mind, but couldn't quite shake, until now.

And what did it matter that Odin had arranged it in order to use her for his own ends? It made more sense than altruism - which was really kind of sad, as she didn't know if it meant she was growing more wise, or more jaded - and it left her room to prove herself. Before now, though she'd hardly recognized the source of her unease, the whole thing had felt far too good to be true; wondering what the catch was had left her deeply uneasy.

Now she knew: she would be granted entrance into the Asgardian Archive and access to the greatest repository of knowledge in the known universe in exchange for secretly spying on her colleagues and reporting to the king. Daunting as it was, uneasy as the thought made her, it balanced the equation. Relief at the simplicity of it kept her smiling, despite the whole new set of worries and questions she now faced.

Jane could never resist a challenge.

Her smile slowly faded, as those challenges began to take more definitive shape before her. He was asking her to be a spy… could she be that duplicitous? And he said that worlds were depending on it. This could be something _really _serious. And really dangerous.

_And isn't that a reason why I _have _to do it? _Thor was always putting himself on the line for others... _What if I could do the same? What if _this _is the chance for healing that I've been waiting for…?_

The scroll snapped closed so abruptly that it left a little slash on her fingertip. She startled and hissed at the sting as it tumbled from her grasp, the seal reforming on the outside as it came to rest on the bed beside her. A bead of blood welled on the pad of her index finger. She stuck it in her mouth, wincing at the sharp little pain and the coppery tang, and glanced up. She startled again.

Arild Olafson was standing stiffly in the doorway, silently eying her like she was a particularly slimy fungus.

"Um… hi," she said lamely. She cleared her throat, glancing at the scroll, then away. "Did Thor find you?"

"I felt a magical release, and came to investigate." His gaze fell on the scroll. "It opened?"

Her eyes trailed back down to the little gold seal. _These words are for your eyes alone…_ "It… um… I don't…" She couldn't lie – he'd seen her reading it, seen it snap closed in her hands when he walked in…

"I will not ask to know the contents of the scroll," the magic master informed her, cutting off her stammering. His words, sharp as the sting of the paper cut, should have been a relief, but their animosity was unsettling, and her relief appeared to annoy him.

Searching for some intelligent response, a quiet, "Oh," was all she could think to say. "Um... thanks."

"Clearly the message was meant for you alone," he elaborated, a barb in his tone. "I don't know how _mortals _behave in such situations, but I am his majesty's subject, and whatever other ideas I might have about my orders, I know my _place._"

Jane's brow drew down sharply.

"And I don't." It wasn't a question. _What is his problem?_

Olafson glared at her coolly.

"That remains to be seen," he replied. "We have not yet arrived on Asgard. There is still time for you to come to your senses, Midgardian."

Jane bit her lip. His reproach shouldn't sting so badly, but somehow it did.

"What do you have against me?" she asked him, curling in her fingers into fists; the protesting pain of her paper cut only added fire and steel to her voice. "What did I ever do to you?"

"It makes no matter what you do," Olafson said evenly, but there was a bite to his tone. "I do not _think _of you at all. I am here on behalf of the Allfather and at the behest of the Master of Masters. Whatever you may mean to the prince, however heroic your actions were deemed by his majesty, regardless of how you will intrude where you do not belong, _you _mean nothing to me." His voice had grown quieter as he spoke, but had gained in rancor, until his diatribe ended in a vitriolic hiss.

Jane stared at him in disbelief, the words from Odin's letter flashing through her mind.

…_underestimated and marginalized…_

_Discriminated against, _she translated with a pang of incredulity, the pieces clicking into place. _That's what this is… _

Olafson was demonstrating to her first hand proof of what Odin had written - which meant that Olafson wasn't alone in his feeling. Odin expected most of the Asgardians to write her off… It was hard to believe that the great Asgardians could be subject to something as base and ignorant as prejudice.

Except…

_What about the Frost Giants? _

Thor's words rang in her memory. _"…no one would have treated Loki as a person, much less a prince, if they had known the truth…"_

But that was because the Jotuns were Asgard's enemies. Wasn't it? It had to be… this was Asgard, a beautiful, perfect world filled with brave and noble beings, a veritable Eden, the home of Alexa Solberg's "gods"…

_Oh…_ Maybe that was the problem.

People on Earth had worshiped Aesir as gods for centuries; some of the Aesir seemed to accept and enjoy the role. Loki had certainly played it up on his first visit to Earth… If they thought themselves as perfect and eternal as advertised, could it be that Asgardians really did believe themselves superior in a fundamental way? A chill went through her as terms like _ubermensch _and _master race_ skittered through her mind… maybe she was being unfair. Asgard was hardly the Third Reich, but then again… If she was right, this meant that her acceptance of the invitation would be seen as far more than an extraterrestrial cultural exchange. From their point of view, she would be a mortal, an inferior, unworthy creature, stepping into heaven to walk amongst the gods.

_But they're not gods. They're aliens… or maybe I am the alien… Either way, they're not better than me, or anyone else. _

Her stomach twisted, but not from trepidation, although that was there too. What she really felt was a deep seated thrill of anger. Who was Arild Olafson, who were these people, to judge her as inferior? She suddenly, fiercely needed to prove them wrong.

_I have every right to go. I was invited by their king!_

Olafson was still staring her down, waiting with grim implacability for some reply, a dark gleam in his eye. If it was a warning, she refused to take it as such. All she saw was a challenge.

"Thor is probably still looking for you," she said, deliberately keeping any heat out of her voice; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of letting him see how deeply his prejudice had affected her. She rose slowly, her fingers curling around Odin's scroll as she stepped towards the door. "Let him know if you want some pizza. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish packing."

Without waiting for a reply, she closed the door in his face. The flash of wide-eyed outrage at her dismissal before the latch clicked was enough to bring a vindictive little smile to her face. She turned and leaned against the door, her fingers tightening around Odin's scroll, thinking hard about everything she'd just learned. Her resolve hardened, as her smile turned eager. Any lingering doubt she may have felt drown under a tide of exhilaration

Jane Foster, formerly the boring, nerdy laughing stock of the scientific community, was leaving behind her superhero boyfriend and going to Asgard to be a secret agent, learn all the secrets of the gods, and prove that anything they could do, she could do better.

A giddy little giggle escaped the back of her throat as she went to see if she could cram an extra pair of sneakers into suitcase. She could hardly wait to get started.

.

* * *

That night Jane emerged from the bathroom after brushing her teeth to find Thor sitting against the headboard, staring dejectedly out the window.

"Hey," she said softly, climbing onto the bed to sit facing him at his side. "You okay?"

The lost look in his ageless eyes when he turned to her made her chest ache. He smiled sadly at her.

"I shall be," he said softly. He looked away again, out at the stars. "I was merely marveling at the strange direction events have taken. I never imagined that I would find myself bound to Midgard, with you bound for Asgard." He chuckled, but it wasn't a very happy sound. "Do you ever look at your life and wonder how came to be where you are?"

Jane raised her eyebrows. "All the time," she assured her alien prince wryly. "Listen… I know this… isn't what either of us expected but… you understand, right? That this is something I _have_ to do?" _Now more than ever… _It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about the scroll, and all his father had in mind for her. But… _These words are for your eyes only… _

_I already keep plenty of secrets from him. What's one more? _

She winced inwardly against an agonizing prickle of guilt.

"Life is too short to stand still," she told him instead. "I could never forgive myself if I passed this up. Do you understand?"

Thor closed his eyes.

"I believe I do," he said slowly. "But you must forgive me for my slow acceptance… this is something that will always differ between us, Jane. Your kind and my kind… I can never know what it is to race against the passage of time as you do." He grimaced. "Beside you, my kind are standing still. The only context I have for what you mean is to realize how short my time with you might be…"

"Oh, Thor…" Jane breathed, reaching out to cradle his face in her hands. Her fingers threaded in his beard so that she could touch his skin as her chest constricting with longing and an even deeper guilt.

He smiled, reaching up to cover her hands with his own and bringing them down to rest on the bedspread between them.

"Pay me no mind," he told her. "I am merely thinking too hard. Old mistakes. Uncertainty. Regrets. It is nothing…"

Jane bit her lip. "You don't regret coming here… do you?"

Thor shook his head immediately, and it was his turn to reach out for her, one strong hand enfolding her shoulder, the other coming up under her chin to raise her face towards his.

"Never," he said vehemently. His brow furrowed. "But…"

"What?" Jane blinked, troubled by his worried expression. "Thor, what is it?"

"You might… while you're on Asgard, you might… hear things. About me. About my past, things I have done… or will do one day…" He shook his head, then caught her eye. "Just remember, no matter what you might hear, that I adore you, Jane. I still believe we were brought together for a reason. Swear to me, no matter what you hear, that you won't forget that."

Jane let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her face breaking into a relieved smile. The way he was talking, she'd been worried for a moment. But it was no secret that he'd been a bit of a spoiled brat before coming to Earth. _Well… a little more than that… he started a war because someone called him a 'princess'… _She pushed the thought aside. It would take more than some wild stories about his past to make her forget what kind of man he was today.

"I won't forget," she promised solemnly, "But you have to promise that you'll come to Asgard as soon as you are finished here. I'm going to be lost without you."

To seal the deal, she leaned forward and gave him a slow, sweet kiss.

"Mmm…" he growled, and Jane shrieked and giggled as he pulled her down and rolled over on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. "I am going to miss you," he murmured against her throat as his fingers found the waistband of her pajama pants. "Let's make it count."

"Oh…okay… ah!" was all Jane could say. And then there was no more talk.

.

* * *

"You're going to bring me back something badass, right?" Darcy called from the kitchen where she was rummaging through the cabinets. It was early, and her intern claimed there'd been no time for breakfast.

"The most badass thing I can find," Jane assured her. "You too Erik!" Darcy would be working with Erik while she was gone, so her souvenir for Erik was more of a bribe.

"Just be safe. Take care of yourself. And work hard. This is a once in a life time opportunity, Jane," he said, taking on his 'dad' tone again. Jane smiled to hear it. "Actually, more like once in twenty or thirty lifetimes. So, have fun too. Make it count."

Jane fought off a blush at the choice of words, glancing at Thor, who winked at her, having caught the words as well. Stifling a giggle, she hugged Erik tightly, kissing him on the cheek. She hugged Darcy too as she returned from the kitchen, careful to avoid getting any Cheetos dust in her hair from her friend's fingers.

"Try not to drive him too crazy."

"Hey, he went into this with his eyes open," Darcy pointed out matter-of-factly, then grinned when Jane rolled her eyes. "Oh, Ian said to tell you good luck when I left his apartment this morning. He wanted to be here, but, well, he's a bit tied up at the moment." Jane raised an eyebrow at her. "What? I mean with housework, duh!"

"I don't want to know," Jane assured her.

Darcy winked at her. "Have a blast, Foster." All Jane could do was laugh.

And then there was Thor.

Though they'd said a rather intense and thorough good-bye last night, it was still no easy thing to look up at him, not knowing how long it would be she would see those clear blue eyes and quick smile again, and say the words. He stepped forward and folded her in his arms, bending to press his forehead to hers.

"Be well while we are apart," he told her. "And… remember your promise."

"I won't forget," she reaffirmed in a small voice, blinking as tears threatened to blur her view of him. "Remember yours."

"Depend upon it." His kiss was warm and consuming, and the only thing that pried her out of his embrace was the distant awareness that they had an audience – particularly the magic master noisily pacing out on the balcony. "Farewell, Jane," he said wistfully as she stepped away. It was time

"See you soon," she said, including Darcy and Erik in the statement as she turned towards the door.

Olafson saw her turn and ceased his restless pacing to stand with his arms crossed, watching her come. The sight of him standing there, waiting for her to come to him, while her friends hung back, staying behind in her home, struck something in her. A dizzying wave of overwhelming significance crested over her. It was one of those moments when time seemed to slow down to a crawl, and the world seemed pregnant with meaning and potential.

In her head, she heard the aloof magic master's words once more; "_W__e have not yet arrived on Asgard. There is still time for you to come to your senses..." _

Jane thought she had made her choice a week ago. She thought she'd made it again, last night. Only now did she realize that this was the moment when she _really _chose. Her stomach twisted with something like panic, and for an instant she could hear the ocean in her ears. On the threshold, she paused, teetering on a precipice, about to pitch into a mysterious unknown, her heart thundering behind her eyes, fluttering in her stomach, and closing her throat. She wasn't brave enough for this, she wasn't quick enough, she wasn't clever enough…

"_But you love mysteries…" _Jane's breath caught, and she held it as Loki's words from that day in Alexa's apartment rose from her memory. _"You love the search for knowledge… the secret realities that elude you and lead you ever on…" _ In her mind, his voice held a taunting quality, a challenge, like the one Odin presented her, like the one Olafson presented her… she could never resist a challenge… _"Come, tell me the truth, Jane. You would grow bored if the answers lay placidly at your feet to be plucked like berries from the vine. It is the hunt for knowledge that drives you…"_

Her heart stilled, the nervous energy in her blood seeming to gather back into her center, as from the past Loki reminded her who she was, and why she would never forgive herself if she let this moment pass her by. She was afraid of the unknown that awaited her – terrified in fact. But that was just another reason she had to do it.

Her mind had been so full of her friends, of her life here, and of Thor this past week, it seemed strange and somehow portentous that her final thought as she stepped over the threshold and into the unknown, was of Loki. So strange to think that it was Loki who helped her find her courage, here at the eleventh hour. Decidedly odd to think he was still protecting her in unexpected ways, by lending her the strength to choose her own path. And with the golden disc was in the pocket of her jeans, and the rune amulet still hanging around her neck, she found it intriguing that Loki's gift and Loki's bane were the only two mementos she would carry with her on this adventure.

Her foot hit the pavement of the balcony, swinging her deftly over the threshold that demarcated the boundary between one phase of her life and the next, and time resumed its normal motion, with no one else the wiser as to the paradigm shift that had just occurred.

At her approach, Olafson heaved a long-suffering sigh, as thought to say '_finally_', though with Thor standing a few steps behind, he dared not voice anything of the kind. Her bags had been stacked against the wall, and now the magic master stepped up beside them. Jane watched in unabashed amazement as, with a two handed sweeping gesture, the bags rose of the ground and swept in a circle, seeming to draw in on themselves until they vanished with a soft crack.

_How? _she was desperate to ask. This was not the right man to teach her; even so, she had to bite down hard on her lip to keep the questions behind her teeth. Curiosity gnawed at the base of her brain like a rodent at an electrical wire. _Soon, _she promised herself as she stepped up beside the Asgardian. She met Olafson's cool gaze as she wrapped her hands around his stiffly proffered arm. _The answers are all there. The true wealth of Asgard, mine for the taking… and I'm going to take it. I am going to walk amongst the gods in their paradise; I am going to question everything, learn everything, discover everything, _she swore in silent challenge to his forbidding expression.

The exhilaration of impending discovery, the thrill of the hunt, rose over her, washing away all doubt, so that far from showing her friends her previous fear or ambivalence, the smile she flashed Thor, Darcy and Erik was nearly dazzling.

"Heimdall!" Arild Olafson called out to the sky. "We await your service!"

Jane's stomach tightened as she heard the sky rumble overhead. _Courage._

_I'm going to make this count, _she reiterated one final time as the light of the Bifrost abruptly engulfed them, so bright and fierce that her friends did not see her smile widen with a wicked predatory hunger. _I'm going to hunt down every scrap of information the Archive has to offer, claim all the answers I've ever craved. _

_And nothing is going to stand in my way._

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TBC

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**A/N**: So is anybody still reading this? *peeks around the corner to check* Bet you thought I fell down the rabbit hole and left this story behind! Well, ha, you were wrong! It just _feels_ that way most days... copious amounts of _stuff_ has been happening, family in and out of hospital, people moving in, people moving out, a brand new 60 hour work week (time and a half overtime pay vs time to write fanfiction... oh, the ambivalence... but I have to keep the muse in vodka and dirty anime, the little degenerate has expensive tastes...)

In other (more coherent) words, I promise I'm still writing, its just taking a little longer at the moment.

Enough about my unappealing life story - to the fanfiction! Intrigue and scandal are afoot, and Jane hasn't even reached Asgard yet! Yay! Please take pity on my poor, deprived, withdrawal-stricken muse and let me know what you think! Comments and critiques are always welcome, they help me become a better writer!

Also! I have decided that the theme song for Part III is **_Wicked Garden_ **by Stone Temple Pilots, for its double, triple, and even quadruple entedres within the context of this story. Great song, go listen.


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